본 논문은 데카르트의 회의라는 주제를 둘러싼 푸코와 데리다의 논쟁에 나오는 대립된 주장을 검토하고 그것의 철학적 의미를 규명하는 것을 목표로 한다. 데카르트에 대한 두 철학자의 독해는 논증의 구조를 중시하는 입장과 사유하는 주체의 실천적 태도를 중시하 는 입장으로 특징지을 수 있다. 먼저 푸코는 코기토를 확립함에 있어 성찰 의 기획이 갖 는 철학적 함의, 즉 억압적 성격을 비판한다. 광기의 위상과 관련해서 그는 데카르트가 코 기토를 정립하면서 광기를 이성의 영역 밖으로 완전히 배제시켰다는 점에서 데카르트를 비판한다. 이에 반해 데리다는 데카르트가 악령의 가설과 같은 형이상학적 회의를 (...) 구분해 서 사용하고 있음을 지적하면서 데카르트가 이런 형이상적 회의를 통해서 우리를 사유의 극한으로 혹은 형이상학적 광기로 이끈다고 주장한다. 이런 논쟁을 통해 우리는 데리다가 악령에 대한 철학적 성찰을 통해서 추적한 이성의 원천의 의미를 이해할 수 있을 것이다. 그리고 그의 이런 논증은 사유의 한계를 검토하게 할 뿐 아니라 어디에서 이성이 무의 침 묵에 저항해서 등장하는지를 이해하게 해준다. 우리는 이런 이성의 탄생에 대한 성찰을 통 해 역사적 구조에 기반한 사유와 구별되는 철학적 역사성을 발견할 수 있을 것이다. (shrink)

Exactly four hundred years after the birth of René Descartes, the present volume now makes available, for the first time in a bilingual, philosophical edition prepared especially for English-speaking readers, his _Regulae ad directionem ingenii / Rules for the Direction of the Natural Intelligence_, the Cartesian treatise on method. This unique edition contains an improved version of the original Latin text, a new English translation intended to be as literal as possible and as liberal as necessary, an interpretive essay (...) contextualizing the text historically, philologically, and philosophically, a com-prehensive index of Latin terms, a key glossary of English equivalents, and an extensive bibliography covering all aspects of Descartes' methodology. Stephen Gaukroger has shown, in his authoritative _Descartes: An Intellectual Biography_, that one cannot understand Descartes without understanding the early Descartes. But one also cannot understand the early Descartes without understanding the _Regulae / Rules._ Nor can one understand the _Regulae / Rules_ without understanding a philosophical edition thereof. Therein lies the justification for this project. The edition is intended, not only for students and teachers of philosophy as well as of related disciplines such as literary and cultural criticism, but also for anyone interested in seriously reflecting on the nature, expression, and exercise of human intelligence: What is it? How does it manifest itself? How does it function? How can one make the most of what one has of it? Is it equally distributed in all human beings? What is natural about it, and what, not? In the _Regulae / Rules_ Descartes tries to provide, from a distinctively early modern perspective, answers both to these and to many other questions about what he refers to as ingenium. (shrink)

"The introduction of Historical Dictionary of Feminist Philosophy provides a useful overview of the subject, while the chronology runs the gamut from ancient Greek to contemporary feminist philosophers. Dictionary entries cover both the central figures and ideas from the historical tradition of philosophy, as well as ideas and theories from contemporary feminist philosophy, such as epistemology and topics like abortion and sexuality. In addition to including entries on Aristotle, Plato, Descartes, Kant, Wollstonecraft, Beauvoir, and Daly, relevant aspects (...) of other fields of philosophy, the major concepts, and prevailing interpretations and conjectures are also covered. A comprehensive bibliography allows for further reading."--BOOK JACKET. (shrink)

Maintaining that it is impossible to understand the work of a philosopher without understanding the previous history of thought and the contemporaneous developments, this book, originally published in 1932, is an in-depth study of Descartes’ philosophy with a strong emphasis on the historical approach. It covers Descartes’ early life and education, before continuing to discuss his method of doubt, the existence of God, the scientific interpretation of nature, the unity of knowledge, the attributes of God and free-will.

Descartes famously states that God could have made any and all of the “eternal truths” that are now in place false. This has led scholars to attribute to Descartes’s God a radical sort of power: the power to do the logically impossible. While Descartes does claim that God could have made any of the eternal truths that are now in place false, I do not think that this commits him to the view that God could have made (...) twice four equal to nine, or anything of that sort. In this paper I show how, by placing Descartes’s doctrine of the eternal truths in its proper historical context, a new and more charitable interpretation of that doctrine becomes available. On this interpretation, Descartes’s God could have made the eternal truths false by choosing not to create the eternal essences to which these truths refer. (shrink)

Descartes’s Method: The Formation of the Subject of Science provides a systematic interpretation of Descartes’s method in Rules for the Direction of the Mind and related texts. The book reconstructs Descartes’s method in its entirety and concretely demonstrates both the efficacy of the method in the sciences as well as the unity of the method from Rules for the Direction of the Mind (1620s) to Principles of Philosophy (1644). The principal thesis of the book is that (...) class='Hi'>Descartes’s method is a problem-solving cognitive disposition (or habitus) that can be actualized in a variety of well-defined ways, depending always on the nature of problem. The book divides into five parts and eleven chapters. Parts I–II (Chapters 1–4) develop an interpretation of the historical and conceptual foundations of Descartes’s method (its operations and acquisition), while the remainder of the book (Parts III–V, which include Chapters 5–11) demonstrates the fruits of the method in solutions to problems in the sciences (above all, mathematics and optics). (shrink)

Review of THEO C. MEYERING, Historical Roots of Cognitive Science : The Rise of a Cognitive Theory of Perception from Antiquity to the Nineteenth Century. Boston: Kluwer, xix + 250 pp. $69.00. Examines the author's interpretation of Aristotelian theories of perceptual cognition, early modern theories, and Helmholtz's theory.

The aim of this dissertation is to provide a critique of the idea that skepticism was the driving force in the development of early modern thought. Historian of philosophy Richard Popkin introduced this thesis in the 1950s and elaborated on it over the next five decades, and recent scholarship shows that it has become an increasingly accepted interpretation. I begin with a study of the relevant historical antecedents—the ancient skeptical traditions of which early modern thinkers were aware—Pyrrhonism and Academicism. (...) Then I discuss the influence of skepticism on three pre-Cartesians: Francisco Sanches, Michel de Montaigne, and Pierre Charron. Basing my arguments on an informed understanding of both ancient Greek skepticism and some of the writings of these philosophers, I contend that it is inaccurate to predominantly characterize Sanches, Montaigne, and Charron as skeptics. To support his thesis about the singular influence of skepticism on early modern thought, Popkin says that René Descartes’ metaphysical philosophy was formed as a response to a skeptical threat and that Descartes ultimately conceded to the force of skepticism. He also argues that David Hume was a Pyrrhonist par excellence. I disagree with Popkin’s claims. I argue that Descartes was not as deeply affected by skepticism as Popkin suggests and that it is inaccurate to characterize Hume as a Pyrrhonist. By offering this critique, I hope to make clear to the readers two things: first, that Popkin’s thesis, though it is both enticing and generally accepted by many scholars, is questionable with regard to its plausibility; second, that the arguments I present in this dissertation reveal that further research into the role of skepticism in early modern philosophy is in order. (shrink)

In his article 'Individualism and Descartes' (Teorema, vol. 16, pp. 71-86), William Ferraiolo puts into question the widely accepted interpretation of Descartes as an individualist about mental content. In this paper, I defend this interpretation of Descartes thought against Ferraiolo's objections. I hold, first, that the interpretation is not historically misguided. Second, I try to show that Descartes’s endorsement of anti-individualism would lead either to depriving skeptical hypotheses of their force or to rejecting the epistemological privilege (...) of the first person. Finally, I argue that Ferraiolo’s objections to the individualistic interpretation rest on two important errors: a misapprehension of the argumentative order of the Meditations and a confusion between the notions of causal and constitutive dependence of content on the external environment. (shrink)

In the past decade, several Descartes scholars have gone on record claiming that, for biological purposes, Descartes likely accepts the practical scientific necessity of the existence of “physical natures,” even while his official substance-mode ontology and his characterization of matter in terms of extension do not license the existence of physical natures. In this article, I elaborate on the historical context of Descartes’s biology, the “practical scientific necessity” just mentioned, and argue, contrary to other interpretations, (...) that Descartes does offer a philosophical justification for the existence of physical natures, albeit not by appeal to the categories of substance and mode, or matter as such, but by appeal to our “nature” as a union between mind and body. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.2 (2001) 294-295 [Access article in PDF] Schouls, Peter A. Descartes and the Possibility of Science. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000. Pp. x + 171. Cloth, $35.00. There are at least three ways to write the history of philosophy. Truly historical historians of philosophy emphasize the context and development of ideas, concentrating on the intellectual, social, and personal factors that affect (...) the way philosophers have thought about their subject. Analytic philosophers take a critical approach, considering the logic and merit of the arguments of philosophers who have lived in the past almost as if they are engaging in contemporary debates. Another group of philosophers use the ideas of historical figures to support their own philosophical agendas. Peter Schouls' new book on Descartes falls into this third category.Schouls' aim is to present Descartes' philosophy as the origin of modernity. What he means is that "Descartes believed that the world and humanity exist in a relationship which makes it possible for humanity to improve its state through manipulating the world. This manipulation is by means of developing and applying science." Schouls interprets Descartes' notion of progress as leading to "increases in freedom from the drudgery of labor, from the suffering of illness, and from the anxiety of interpersonal and international quarrels,"(ix) arguing that mind-body dualism is necessary for humanity to accomplish these lofty goals.Schouls asks what conditions are needed for humans to develop the science that is a necessary condition for the kinds of progress Descartes sought (and Schouls clearly endorses). Human progress depends on the possibility of science. Descartes founded his science on the pure metaphysics developed in The Meditations. These metaphysical foundations provided the framework for his claim that the human mind can acquire certain knowledge of the world. Central to Descartes' method, Schouls argues, is the view that the imagination must be incorporeal. If this view can be justified, it is a significant departure from the views of most seventeenth-century philosophers who thought that the imagination is a corporeal organ that translates and transmits mechanical impulses to the incorporeal soul. Schouls argues that because the subject-matter of science, especially geometry, involves imagining relationships apart from empirical [End Page 294] experience, it is necessary that the imagination must be incorporeal. Consequently, mind-body dualism is a necessary condition for the kind of science and progress that Descartes sought.There are flaws in this book, some having to do with Schouls' argument and some having to do with its lack of historical context. The two problems are inextricably linked. Schouls reads Descartes without due consideration of historical context. The book's bibliography reveals no primary sources other than the writings of Descartes. Descartes did not write in an intellectual vacuum. He worked within a community of philosophers, and that community provided both the background and audience for his own thoughts. Ignoring this seventeenth-century context causes Schouls to misread the significance of some of Descartes' ideas. For example, he writes that Descartes' philosophy was condemned in both Protestant and Catholic venues "in part because of its assertion of the limitlessness of human freedom" (4). In fact, Descartes' philosophy was banned because he attempted to give a mechanical explanation of the Eucharist. On a related point, Schouls' drive to present Descartes as the origin of modernity causes him to sideline important issues such as the role of theology in Descartes' thought.Similarly, the lack of historical context leads to errors of interpretation. As Alan Gabbey and others have recently demonstrated, terms like "mechanics" and "science" meant something different in the seventeenth century from what they mean today. Even the terms a priori and a posteriori had different meanings in early modern thought. Schouls expresses some mystification about Descartes' use of the term "a priori" in the second Meditiation. This mystification would vanish if he had taken into account early modern usage according to which a priori means reasoning from the one, true cause to an effect rather than acquiring knowledge of the world independently of experience.Schouls' argument sometimes loses... (shrink)

This book is a systematic study of Descartes' theory of causation and its relation to the medieval and early modern scholastic philosophy that provides its proper historical context. The argument presented here is that even though Descartes offered a dualistic ontology that differs radically from what we find in scholasticism, his views on causation were profoundly influenced by scholastic thought on this issue. This influence is evident not only in his affirmation in the Meditations of the abstract (...) scholastic axioms that a cause must contain the reality of its effects and that conservation does not differ in reality from creation, but also in the details of the accounts of body-body interaction in his physics, of mind-body interaction in his psychology, and of the causation that he took to be involved in free human action. In contrast to those who have read Descartes as endorsing the "occasionalist" conclusion that God is the only real cause, a central thesis of this study is that he accepted what in the context of scholastic debates regarding causation is the antipode of occasionalism, namely, the view that creatures rather than God are the causal source of natural change. What emerges from the defense of this interpretation of Descartes is a new understanding of his contribution to modern thought on causation. (shrink)

With the systematic aim of clarifying the phenomenon sometimes described as “the intellectual apprehension of first principles,” Descartes’ first principle par excellence is interpreted before the historical backcloth of Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics. To begin with, three “faces” of the cogito are distinguished: (1) the proto-cogito (“I think”), (2) the cogito proper (“I think, therefore I am”), and (3) the cogito principle (“Whatever thinks, is”). There follows a detailed (though inevitably somewhat conjectural) reconstruction of the transition of the mind (...) from (1) via (3) to (2) and back again to (3). What emerges is, surprisingly, a non-circular, non-logical, and ultimately non-mysterious process by which first principles implicitly contained in a complex intuition are gradually rendered explicit (and, if abstract, grasped in their abstract universality). This process bears a striking family resemblance to that intuitive induction (“grasping the universal in the particular”) which Aristotle scholars have distinguished from empirical forms of induction. (shrink)

Purрose of the рaрer is to emphasize affinity and succession in the aррroaches of Descartes and Kierkegaard to the interpretation of key factors of their philosophical search. It could be implemented through understanding such viewpoints of both thinkers as a) appropriate reasons for human existence; b) possible factors for human freedom as a condition of self-actualization; c) original approach to prove the existence of God. Theoretical basis. The use of phenomenology and hermeneutics enable us to comprehend the key philosopher’s (...) ideas as the manifestation of their personalities. Originality. The author believes that it is quite right to refer to the philosophy of the early modern period as a form of its demand fulfillment for human development. An essential prerequisite for revealing the toрic of the article is a focus on the latest investigations of Descartes’ philosophy, which demonstrate the anthropological significance. Since Kierkegaard’s viewpoint was developed through depersonalized understanding of philosophy, related motives of their thoughts are expressed by emphasizing their personal motives of philosophizing. This affinity is reflected firstly, in distancing from depersonalized and dehumanized world view; secondly, in religion-oriented search and proof of God’s existence based on human nature. Conclusions. Due to the modern state of historical and philosophical science, it is possible to argue that Descartes and Kierkegaard had content-related philosophizing motives, which are close to current search. Interpreting Descartes’ anthropological project by Kierkegaard, the author states the accepted determining influence of Hegel’s philosophy interpretation in general and his interpretation of Descartes, in particular. This argument allows to understand Kierkegaard’s search as Hegel’s deconstruction, because further uncritical retention and reproduction of his viewpoints are evaluated as a threat to fulfill human spiritual calling. A common and important thing in the views of both thinkers is their strong interest in individual and personal aspects of human nature as a constituent factor of God’s existence. (shrink)

Descartes plays a strange role in modern philosophy. Called the "father" of modern philosophy, he is more like a Freudian father where his "sons" feel the need to overthrow him. Perhaps no other philosopher has been "refuted" more than Descartes has. Indeed, a unifying characteristic of many diverse contemporary philosophic movements has been its anti-Cartesianism. But as so often happens in the history of philosophy, we are coming to realize that Descartes himself was not a "Cartesian." This (...) study which is designed "to help the undergraduate and graduate students in understanding Descartes' philosophy" is organized around the central philosophic issues raised in the Meditations. It is not a historical or a philosophic reconstruction of Descartes. Nor is Kenny concerned to give a last ditch defense of Descartes. Kenny takes Descartes seriously, defending him against false objections and criticizing Descartes where Kenny thinks he has gone astray. In the course of his analysis, Kenny exhibits his knowledge of Descartes' corpus and the growing literature in Anglo-Saxon philosophy dealing with Descartes. At times, Kenny doesn't do full justice to some of the objections and interpretations of Descartes. And one wishes that his own interpretations were developed in greater detail. But Kenny certainly succeeds in making Descartes "come alive" and showing us how he still is relevant for contemporary philosophic inquiry.--R. J. B. (shrink)

I offer a novel reading in this dissertation of René Descartes’s (1596–1650) skepticism in his work Meditations on First Philosophy (1641–1642). I specifically aim to answer the following problem: How is Descartes’s skepticism to be read in accordance with the rest of his philosophy? This problem can be divided into two more general questions in Descartes scholarship: How is skepticism utilized in the Meditations, and what are its intentions and relation to the preceding philosophical tradition? -/- I (...) approach the topic from both a historical and a text-based analysis, combining textual and contextual research. I examine Descartes’s skepticism against two main traditions in the historical analysis: philosophical skepticism and Aristotelian Scholasticism. I argue that skepticism in the Meditations is intended to oppose and upheave both Scholasticism and skepticism. The intended results of the work are not merely epistemological but also metaphysical and even ethical. Furthermore, these ambitions cannot be neatly distinguished but merge into each other. -/- The third historical context against which the skeptical meditations are examined is the literary genre of meditative exercises, particularly from the 1500–1600’s, which, while religiously and spiritually oriented, likewise provided the practitioner with an enlightened understanding of self-knowledge and their cognitive place in the world on the way to closer spiritual proximity to God. I argue by this reading that the skepticism of the Meditations is an attentive, meditational cognitive exercise that is not merely instrumental and methodological but is to have a genuine and serious (psychologically real) effect on our thinking. The skeptical meditation is not simply a theoretical thought experiment but is to be seriously practiced as a transformative process of reorienting one’s cognitive framework to discover truth, certainty, and a way to a happy, tranquil, and virtuous life. -/- I offer a close reading in the textual analysis of the first three meditations of the Meditations. I argue that the meditative skepticism employed in the work does not reject the previous beliefs but suspends judgment on them, withdrawing assent until further evidence can be found. I introduce a new term into Descartes scholarship in this analysis, based on the terminology of ancient skepticism: Cartesian epochē (gr. epochē, suspension, withdrawal). Instead of rejecting previous beliefs or assenting to the probably false, the skeptical procedure of the Meditations is argued to emulate in important ways the suspension of judgment on equally balanced reasons in ancient Pyrrhonian skepticism. Novel interpretations are presented along the way of the will’s freedom, of the First Meditation’s skeptical scenarios, of the cogito, and of the vindication of metaphysical certainty, as well as a clarification of the Cartesian Circle problem. -/- Reinterpreting the relation of Descartes’s skepticism to the preceding historical and literary traditions leads to a new look at the skeptical method itself. Presenting a new interpretation of skepticism in the Meditations leads at the same time to a new look at its relation to the historical context. The two research questions are, then, intrinsically tied together. -/- My focus in the study is on the Meditations, but I also reference and discuss Descartes’s other philosophical works, as well as his correspondence, when necessary. (shrink)

The philosopher Donald Davidson has argued in an influential article, “On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme,” that there is no intelligible basis on which to distinguish between conceptual schemes that Kuhn and Feyerabend have treated as incommensurable or incompatible. He concludes that, given the underlying methodology of interpretation of speech behavior, we cannot be in a position to judge that others have concepts or beliefs radically different from our own. Thus, he adds, we cannot talk meaningfully about the (...) existence of conceptual schemes. I offer a historical rejoinder to Davidson, focusing on the famous seventeenth-century debate between Descartes and Gassendi regarding the use of the first-person pronoun. I show that, in this particular debate, their failure to translate the pronoun “I” was so basic and fundamental a failure that, although it turned on just one word, it forced Gassendi to question the longstanding Renaissance humanist principle of the intertranslatability of all natural languages. Could the Gassendi-Descartes debate similarly challenge Davidson’s assertion of the intertranslatability of all natural languages and his consequent denial of the existence of conceptual schemes? (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Descartes and Husserl. The Philosophical Project of Radical BeginningsMichael K. ShimPaul S. MacDonald. Descartes and Husserl. The Philosophical Project of Radical Beginnings. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2000. Pp. 285. Paper, $21.95.The enormous influence exerted by Descartes on Husserl's phenomenological philosophy cannot be underestimated. Not only is Husserl quite open and explicit about his philosophical debt to Descartes, but the fundamental motivation (...) of the phenomenological [End Page 593] method (directed towards apodeicticity and the purification of consciousness) would most likely be meaningless without reference to the Cartesian precedent. Consequently, almost every exegetical approach to Husserlian phenomenology has at least mentioned the relevance of the Cartesian tradition. Unfortunately, rare has been the phenomenological treatment of Descartes current with the latest scholarship. As an exception to this general shortcoming, MacDonald's book is a most welcome entry into Husserl scholarship.One of MacDonald's main theses is that Descartes and Husserl shared similarities in historical circumstances and, thus, shared similar motives for their "radical beginnings" in philosophy. With regards to Descartes' historical circumstances, by providing a breathtaking overview of sixteenth-century skepticism, MacDonald gives a cogent account of what led to Descartes' attempted construction of an absolute epistemological foundation for philosophy. However, the "conceptual confusions and collapses" of neo-skepticism will "survive the Cartesian overthrow and, like a persistent contagion" (31) reappear in the form of nineteenth-century psychologism. MacDonald does a convincing job of highlighting the skeptical profile of psychologism by providing systematic parallels between the mainstays of neo-skepticism and nineteenth-century psychologism: namely, distrust of objective knowledge, subjective reductionism and epistemological relativism. Accordingly, what motivates Husserl's epoché has both historical and systematic resources in the Cartesian reduction. The point itself is nothing new, and Husserl himself stresses the skepticism of nineteenth-century psychologism, but the scholarship and erudition that inform MacDonald's detailed historical account is to be commended.The truly ambitious aspect of the book, however, is the painstakingly worked out systematic comparison between the respective philosophical projects. In this respect, MacDonald takes two correlated approaches. The first approach takes up the metaphors of discovery and "voyage of exploration" (5) common to both thinkers' writings in order to explicate the meaning of philosophical transformation or "conversion," a "cognitive-affective reorientation of the whole self" (227). However, these metaphors are to be understood as symptomatic of deeper formal parallels between the two thinkers.The second approach begins with the daring claim that "Descartes' and Husserl's formal ontologies are... functionally equivalent" (95), a claim MacDonald proposes to reinforce by examining the structural parallels between Descartes' simple-complex dyad on the one hand and Husserl's part-whole theory as introduced in the Third Logical Investigations. This claim is brought into relief by a reformation of Descartes' conception of "ideas." Rather than restrict the Cartesian conception of ideas to "objective content," MacDonald emphasizes the act-quality of Cartesian ideas (125-7). Thereby an intentional conception of Cartesian ideas is made possible. Anyone familiar with Husserl should not find this surprising: what MacDonald is trying to suggest is a division of Cartesian ideas into noesis and noema, with the "material" aspect of act-ideas finding phenomenological restoration in Husserl's "hyletic data." With these elements in place, MacDonald largely succeeds in constructing a fuller and richer than usual comparison between methodical doubt and the phenomenological reduction (151ff), centered on a non-mystical eidetic intuitionism. MacDonald's ultimate conclusion is [End Page 594] that Husserlian phenomenology, as "first philosophy," is thoroughly consistent with Cartesian metaphysics, now understood as "second philosophy" (243).MacDonald's systematic conclusions are much bolder than one might think, since they are adduced by running against the letter of Husserl's own interpretation of Descartes. The background claim is that Husserl himself did not fully appreciate his debt to Descartes, and it is this exegetical failure that has led to his eventual abandonment of the "Cartesian Way." However, in order to make such an assertion, MacDonald would be obligated to demonstrate the Cartesian influences on the phenomenological pillars of the later Husserl: i.e., temporalization, genetic analysis and the theory of intersubjectivity—as programmatically outlined in the Fourth and... (shrink)

It is no surprise that the phenomenal qualities of our sensory experience pose recalcitrant philosophical problems for a physical materialist metaphysics. The colors of flowers as we experience them by sight, the taste of a ripe peach, and the smell of fresh-cut grass are undeniably part of the experienced world; yet in their phenomenal mode, they do not seem well-placed in the physicist's world of particles and energy fields. It seems, prima facie, that the metaphysical programs found in earlier science (...) and philosophy were better suited to accommodate these qualities: in the hylomorphic world of the Aristotelians, colors were "real qualities" existing as such in flowers; in the dualistic world of Descartes, colors were displaced from things like flowers to the immaterial mind of the perceiver. The dissertation argues that this intuition about our philosophical heritage is both philosophically confused and historically inaccurate. It betrays a misconception about phenomenal qualities and the problems they pose which results from a failure to distinguish phenomenal qualities from a special subset of sensible qualities that we have come to call "secondary" qualities. Disentangled from the primary-secondary quality distinction, phenomenal qualities include all sensible qualities insofar as they form the experiential contents of our sensory perceptions. So considered, phenomenal qualities invite difficult questions about the representational nature and ontological status of our sensory experience even within the Aristotelian and Cartesian metaphysics. By examining Descartes' and the Aristotelians' theories of sense perception with a focus on these questions we achieve a better understanding of "the problem" of phenomenal qualities, better interpretations of these historical theories of sense perception, and suggestions for reshaping the problem space within which we think philosophically about phenomenal qualities today. (shrink)

Rene Descartes's motto challenges his would-be historians: "He lives well who hides well." He hid even in the Discourse on Method, where he professed to recount the story of his "entire life, " but said almost nothing about his childhood and youth. He mentioned neither family nor friends, and he boasted a total freedom from irrational passions. In the Discourse, which presented a new way of achieving certain truth through mathematical reason, Descartes stressed just one event, a day (...) of thinking at the beginning of winter, 1619. Tucked away in an unpublished notebook, however, Descartes also left the Olympica, which documented the wildly irrational dreams he had the night of November 10, 1619, and gave his own enthusiastic interpretations. Embarrassed scholars have tried to reason away this record and even the dreams themselves. Adapting clinical methods to historical research, John Cole offers the first systematic interpretation of the Olympian dreams. He argues that they expressed and masked Descartes's unresolved conflicts: his guilt at having rejected the law career for which he had been trained and which his lawyer father had wanted him to pursue, and his shame over early failures to satisfy the high expectations of his friend and mentor, Isaac Beeckman. Cole shows us how a critical historian can make sense of such irrational material and lets us see the creation of an egocentric and rationalist philosophy. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that Descartes developed an early theory of happiness, which he rhetorically claimed to have stemmed from his choice of vocation in 1619. I provide a sketch of his theory in the Discours, noting, however, some problems with the historicity of the text. I then turn to his Olympica and associated writings that date from this period, where he literally asked, “What way in life shall I follow?” I take Descartes’ dreams as allegorical and (...) provide an interpretation of his curious claim that poets are better equipped to discover truth than philosophers, made at a time when he chose to become a philosopher and not a poet. My way out of this conundrum is to identify in this text a philosophical psychology that I argue is consistent with the Regulae and the Discours, is part of what he took to be his “foundation of the wonderful science,” and is the essence of his early theory of happiness. (shrink)

Was Descartes a Cartesian Dualist? In this controversial study, Gordon Baker and Katherine J. Morris argue that, despite the general consensus within philosophy, Descartes was neither a proponent of dualism nor guilty of the many crimes of which he has been accused by twentieth century philosophers. In lively and engaging prose, Baker and Morris present a radical revision of the ways in which Descartes' work has been interpreted. Descartes emerges with both his historical importance assured (...) and his philosophical importance redeemed. (shrink)

This is a dictionary of Descartes and Cartesian philosophy, primarily covering philosophy in the 17th century, with a chronology and biography of Descartes's life and times and a bibliography of primary and secondary works related to Descartes and to Cartesians.

In the preceding pages, Husserl's objections to the content of Descartes'Meditations on First Philosophy have been reconstructed over the line ofargument in that work. The tone of his interpretation moved from ambivalence to outfight rejection. Husserl's ambivalence manifested itself intwo of the three meditations to which he pays significant attention. We sawthe much heralded methodological strategy of the First Meditation, uponclose examination, is not endorsed by Husserl, that he finds reason toprotest against the content of each individual skeptical argument (...) and seesthere in general a subjectivistic doctrine of consciousness already at work.Nevertheless, Husserl clearly wanted to preserve the essential intent of theCartesian method of doubt if not its letter, namely, the move toward callinginto question naive presuppositions about the world, raising the possibilityof its non-existence, thereby resuscitating sheer wonder about the world,and rendering it problematic in its relation to subjectivity. Historically, thisstrategy has precedent in the ancient Greek sophists, who, however unintentionally, Husserl claims were the first to manifest a transcendental im-pulse. Moving into the Second Meditation and the so-called discovery ofthe ego cogito, we found a stronger ambivalence on Husserl's part. Whileapplauding Descartes for uncovering the truth that lay hidden at the basis ofskepticism, the subsequent interpretation of the ego as soul and substantialentity clouds this inchoative insight into pure transcendental subjectivity.By the Third Meditation Husserl's ambivalence moved to out right rejection. There are a number of reasons why: the circularity of Descartes'theological theory of evidence ; the epistemologicalcommitment to a subjectivistic theory of consciousness; hisScheinprobleme along with the assumption of an objectivein-itself forever remote from intuition; the ontological commitment to twofinite substances; and the attempt to deductively redress the cognitiveschism created by these commitments through appeal to the principle ofcausality and the goodness of God. All these gave Husserl decisive occa-sion to take leave of the Cartesian path of meditation.A further reason why Husserl's meditations consistently break off in theThird Meditation is suggested by noticing the textual moment whereHusserl's silence begins. It is that moment where Descartes dips into theScholastic tradition for the concepts of objective and formal reality in orderto prove the existence of God. The problem, I suggest, is that here Des-cartes insufferably compromises his radicalness. More specifically, with theconcepts of objective and formal reality Descartes installs on the metaphysi-cal level the distinction between image and original already operative allalong in the earlier Meditations. Now, through the concepts of objective andformal reality, the image /original distinction is given ex-planatory power and raised to a truth so evident as to be beyond the reach ofmethodic doubt. The fact that this distinction is employed to deduce theexistence of God is not so much the phenomenological offense as themetaphysical naivete of positing a formal reality, an in itself, to account forthe very matters in question. (shrink)

_Purpose._ The purpose is to justify the validity of interpreting Descartes’ teachings as an enquiry into the search for forms and means of improving human nature, which implies a focus on the way he understands the openness of knowledge and education. The problem is considered from the perspective of representatives of university communities (teachers and librarians), historically included in the communication structure and system of the institution, including through the creation, management, use, preservation and dissemination of knowledge. _Theoretical basis._ (...) One of the tenets of Descartes’ teachings is his desire to improve the human being. For our consideration, it is fundamentally important that Descartes uses "knowledge" not only in a narrow sense – as natural scientific knowledge, but also in a broader sense. In the context of the theme of the study, the most important case is when the thinker recalls the knowledge that every person experiences without referring to philosophy. It is this knowledge that, for Descartes, is key in resolving the central problem of his ethics – how can human nature be perfected? For our consideration of Descartes’ key points, it is fair to focus on the manifestation of the phenomenon of altruism in Descartes’ philosophy and on the representative fact of his inner openness – his willingness to engage in dialogue. He appreciates and encourages his interlocutors to turn to books, which are a form of representation of the vivid personalities of their authors. _Originality._ For the first time in the research literature, the thesis of René Descartes as one of the forerunners of the open knowledge system is substantiated. The arguments are given for the validity of Descartes’ interpretation of the demand of his own epoch for the search of effective forms of human improvement. _Conclusions._ The idea of justification of Descartes’ philosophical legacy as a predictor of open knowledge became possible under the condition of paying attention to the anthropological turn he made and finding substantive analogues of openness, including open education. Drawing on Christianity as the basis for altruism, Descartes demonstrates a caring attitude towards the achievements of previous generations on the path of personal self-development. His attention is rightly drawn to education and books as representations of vibrant personalities. Their authentic and productive assimilation is possible only under the condition of a caring attitude towards the public good, which involves the intellectual volunteering of teachers and librarians. It is about self-realization through altruistic self-improvement, i.e. intellectual charity, which is especially evident today during martial law in Ukraine and is voluntary, conscious and free work for the benefit of others. (shrink)

_ Source: _Page Count 46 René Descartes is neither a Conceptualist nor a Platonist when it comes to the ontological status of the eternal truths and essences of mathematics but articulates a view derived from Proclus. There are several advantages to interpreting Descartes’ texts in light of Proclus’ view of universals and philosophy of mathematics. Key passages that, on standard readings, are in conflict are reconciled if we read Descartes as appropriating Proclus’ threefold distinction among universals. Specifically, (...) passages that appear to commit Descartes to a Platonist view of mathematical objects and the truths that follow from them are no longer in tension with the Conceptualist view of universals implied by his treatment of the eternal truths in the _Principles of Philosophy_. This interpretation also fits the historical evidence and explains why Descartes ends up with seemingly inconsistent commitments to divine simplicity and God’s efficient creation of truths that are not merely conceptually distinct from the divine essence. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Reflection and the Stability of Belief: Essays on Descartes, Hume, and Reid by Louis E. LoebKevin MeekerLouis E. Loeb. Reflection and the Stability of Belief: Essays on Descartes, Hume, and Reid. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. Pp. xvii + 369. ISBN: 978-0-19-536876-5, Cloth, $99.00. ISBN 978-0-19-536875-8, Paper, $45.00.This book is (almost entirely) a collection of previously published essays by Louis Loeb. The first three essays (...) focus primarily on advancing the general interpretive claim that Descartes’s main epistemological goal is achieving unshakable beliefs. While essays 5–10 address many topics in Humean interpretation, they all contribute in various ways to supporting Loeb’s claim that Hume’s primary epistemological goal is achieving stable beliefs. Essay 12 compares the naturalisms of Hume and Reid. All of the collected essays are excellent.Such excellence is not surprising, for Loeb is an influential interpreter of early modern philosophy, justly renowned for the ingenuity of his readings. Spanning the last three decades, these essays display many fine qualities that have helped make Loeb such a prominent historian. Here I will briefly mention three of these qualities. First, Loeb has remarkable command of the primary historical texts and the secondary literature. This mastery is perhaps best seen in his “What is Worth Preserving in the Kemp Smith Interpretation of Hume?” (essay 9). In addition to providing a detailed exposition of a wide range of texts from Hume and Norman Kemp Smith, Loeb also makes adroit comments about the literature discussing the secondary literature when he addresses the “Canonical Understanding” of Kemp Smith (246–47). Second, Loeb effortlessly integrates historical and contemporary concerns. His “Hume’s Agent-Centered Sentimentalism” (essay 8), for instance, has [End Page 257] an interesting discussion of how Hume’s moral theory might aid contemporary utilitarians (238–44). Moreover, essays 5 (“Integrating Hume’s Accounts of Belief and Justification”) and 10 (“Psychology, Epistemology, and Skepticism in Hume’s Argument about Induction”) fruitfully discuss Hume’s epistemology in light of issues important to the contemporary distinction between internalism and externalism. Third, Loeb’s intuitive knack for isolating important connections amongst various texts and figures allows him to tell a concise story about the evolution of certain philosophical ideas that panoramically covers large portions of the history of philosophy. His “Locke and British Empiricism” (essay 11), which connects epistemological themes in Locke with Descartes, Hume, Berkeley, Malebranche, and Reid, among others, is one example. (Because this essay is, as of this writing, still forthcoming, it is the only essay that is not previously published.) Finally, all three of these qualities are prominently on display in “Sextus, Descartes, Hume, and Peirce” (essay 4), which interestingly uses contemporary views about belief (especially as developed by David Velleman) to understand Descartes and Hume “against the backdrop of Sextus and Peirce” (107). To my mind this essay is the best in the book.There are at least two main advantages of collecting these excellent essays into a book. First, the collection allows Loeb to systematically emphasize the similarities between different early modern thinkers in a way that typically strengthens the cumulative case he makes for his readings of these philosophers. Second, the volume permits us to catch a rare glimpse of how an interpreter’s views can change over time. Considering the cumulative effect of the arguments as well as the changes in Loeb’s views also provides us with a great opportunity to reflect critically on many important issues in a fruitful way. The rest of this review will focus on such critical reflections.Let us start with Descartes, as Loeb does. In his introduction to the essays, Loeb helpfully contextualizes his discussions of Descartes. He points out that his paper “Was Descartes Sincere in His Appeal to the Light of Nature?” (not included here) maintains that the arguments Descartes presents are so poor that they “suggest” that “Descartes was insincere in offering his proofs of the existence of God and in appealing to Divine veracity to validate clear and distinct perception” (9; cf. 35). Of course others have likewise contended that Descartes was a dissimulator. But in the first four chapters... (shrink)

In his logical exegesis of Descartes’ cogito, Hintikka has claimed that, formulated as an inference, it would be question--begging and that it is best understood as a performance, But (1), Hintikka’s discussion of an inferential interpretation omits reference to the possible relevance ofmodalities, and (2), Hintikka assumes that to beg the question is to assume what one is trying to prove. Question-begging is better understood in terms of how evident the premisses are in relation to the conclusion. In this (...) paper I construct a modal inferential interpretation, defend itagainst any charge of question-begging, and outline a system of quantified modal logic which would validate it. (shrink)

This dissertation presents a new interpretation of Rene Descartes' views on body/body causation by examining them within their historical context. Although Descartes gives the impression that his views constitute a complete break with those of his predecessors, he draws on both Scholastic Aristotelian concepts of the efficient cause and existing anti-Aristotelian views. ;The combination of Aristotelian and anti-Aristotelian elements in Descartes' theory of causation creates a tension in his claims about the relationship between the first cause, (...) God, and the secondary causes, created things. To make sense of Descartes' position on secondary causation I study the 16th and 17th century debates on secondary causation, God's concurrence, and the action of efficient causes. I examine the Aristotelian commentaries of the Jesuit philosophers Francisco Suarez, Francisco Toledo, Antonio Rubio and the Coimbran Commentators. I also analyze the anti-Aristotelian views on nature and causation found in Sebastian Basson's textbook on natural philosophy. ;The Jesuit philosophers, like Descartes, deny that the extendedness and impenetrability of matter requires the existence of occult forces to penetrate the matter and exercise causality. Rather they argue that causality is exercised by a thing's form and that causal interaction requires only contiguity not penetration. They also downplay the importance of the final cause, making the efficient cause prior in the study of nature. While Descartes rejects their hylomorphism, he agrees with the Jesuits that there are secondary efficient causes which determine God's action, causing a specific kind of effect. However, for Descartes the secondary causes are the laws of nature, not individual substances. ;Descartes' reduction of all natural change to the local motion of material particles is reminiscent of Basson's anti-Aristotelian natural philosophy. Basson reacts against the Jesuit view of secondary causation, arguing that it commits them to attributing cognition to physical causes. His own account of natural causation contains both mechanistic elements, which we find in a more developed form in Descartes' philosophy, and Neoplatonic and Stoic elements which Descartes rejects. (shrink)

Sets out the epistemological context for my enquiry, by outlining the key moves in a formative phase of its historical development: the writings of Descartes, Locke, Hume, Reid, and Kant. My purpose here is not to engage in the detailed exegesis and interpretation of these philosophers’ views, but to delineate the space of live options in the area, and to point out some dead ends.

Recent attempts at preventing the social exclusion of vulnerable children in England have been driven by notions of resilience which centre primarily on changing children so that they may be better able to cope with adversity. Drawing on the concepts of Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT), we suggest that the idea of resilience should be expanded to include developing a capacity to act on and reshape the social conditions of one’s development. We use evidence from two studies of practices (...) in recent re-configurations of children’s services in England to examine whether practitioners are seeing resilience in these terms. We present examples of work which embody these views but suggest that they are not easily incorporated into practices where expertise is centred on care and clear communication. The care and communication model of practice reflects the emphases given to evolutionary notions of child development while a CHAT view of resilience reflects Vygotsky’s concerns with a dialectic between individuals and the social situations of their development. (shrink)

In this paper, I consider Descartes’ Sixth Meditation dropsy passage on the difference between the human body considered in itself and the human composite of mind and body. I do so as a way of illuminating some features of Descartes’ broader thinking about teleology, including the role of teleological explanations in physiology. I use the writings on teleology of some ancient authors for the conceptual (but not historical) help they can provide in helping us to think about (...) the Sixth Meditation passage. From this, I draw several points, most notably that the Sixth Meditation passage is primarily concerned with the natures of body and composites, and that the issue of teleological explanation is derivative of this primary interest. So, we – and Descartes – must come to terms with what he takes the nature of the composite to be such that it has an intrinsic end-referred nature which grounds teleological explanations. I consider three possibilities: the human composite is a third type of substance – a hylomorphic substance; there is a sort of “satisfaction” relationship between mind and body (each of which retains its own distinct nature in the composite) such that the mind confers teleological value on the body; and there is a sort of “satisfaction” relationship between mind and body (each of which retains its own distinct nature in the composite) such that the mind recognizes teleological value in the body. None of these interpretations is without problems. So in the concluding section, I sketch a program for future research, specifically, trying to render Descartes’ teleological thinking consistent by distinguishing between the metaphysical natures of things (the concern of his Sixth Meditation passage) and the physical natures of things (his concern in his physiological writings). (shrink)

Professor Frondizi's The Nature of the Self proposes to solve the problems involved in conceiving the self as a substance. The first section of the book is an historical study of the gradual disintegration, after Descartes, of the view that the self is a substance. The second section offers an account of the self that is presumably not contaminated by this "substantialist outlook." Frondizi's attempt to trace the disintegration of Descartes' concept of the self through Locke, Berkeley (...) and Hume is not remarkable. Rather than a detailed exegesis of the texts of these philosophers, Frondizi presents a polemical commentary, relying on selected letters and a few obvious and familiar texts. He intends to prove that the British philosophers were forced to opt either for the substantialist view of the self or no theory of the self at all. Frondizi excuses this simplistic and biased judgment on the grounds that he is attempting to chart a philosophical movement rather than follow the thought of a particular philosopher: "The history of philosophy has a certain sense of direction, even though there be no concrete goal; and in some periods it is easy to note the general direction in which ideas are developing. Such is the case with the period which extends from Locke to Hume." Such surveys, however, usually beget unwarranted generalizations; certainly Frondizi's has. His thesis that the British philosophers were forced to choose either "substantialism" or skepticism shows a shallow understanding of the empiricist view of the self. This misunderstanding is the basis upon which Frondizi builds his own account of the self. His task, as he sees it, is to preserve the permanence of the self while providing for changes in moods, attitudes, etc. The "functional" interpretation of the self that results from Frondizi's proposal is Gestalt psychology unadulterated. According to Frondizi the self is a "functional Gestalt," a "dynamic structure"; and this homeostatic character accounts for the permanence as well as the fluctuations in the self. In other words, Frondizi advocates a naïve version of Kurt Lewin's "field theory" of the self. Yet, philosophers both Continental and Anglo-American have cautioned against taking Gestalt theory as an unqualified solution to problems endemic of philosophy. Also, psychologists have raised serious objections to Lewin's theory. Moreover, even granted that Frondizi was not familiar with these authors, has Frondizi's naïve study answered Hume? To what extent does a "structure" change and what are the criteria for determining when a structure is dissolved? Hume is not refuted merely by identifying the self with the Whole. Frondizi himself must either claim "substantiality" for his "dynamic structure" or submit it to Hume's analysis. Frondizi advocates an uncritical Gestalttheorie of the self as a result of his uncritical reading of 18th Century British philosophy. As a consequence, Frondizi's book is another example of how not to combine philosophy with psychology.--J. J. F. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.2 (2001) 292-294 [Access article in PDF] Secada, Jorge. Cartesian Metaphysics: The Scholastic Origins of Modern Philosophy. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Pp. xii + 333. Cloth, $59.95. Descartes scholars can welcome this book. Secada supports trends in scholarship that criticize seeing Descartes as merely an anti-skeptical foundationalist, and he challenges many prominent interpretations of Descartes's metaphysics. In (...) addition, Secada helpfully references Scholastic sources to provide context for Descartes's views. This book is also valuable for philosophers in contemporary metaphysics and epistemology. Secada uses the tools and idiom of analytic philosophy to explain and defend Descartes, and he is sympathetic to Descartes's project, even if he grants that aspects of it "are difficult to articulate clearly and convincingly" (174).The book's central theme is the contrast between Descartes's "essentialism" and the "existentialism" of Scholastics. Secada explains the distinction as follows: "Essentialism (existentialism) is the doctrine, first, that one cannot know the existence (essence) of any substance without first knowing its essence (existence), and, secondly, that one can know the essence (existence) of some substance without knowing its existence (essence)" (8). Cartesian Metaphysics interprets Descartes's corpus as a defense of essentialism in the light of Scholastic existentialism.The first three chapters set the stage. Chapter One distinguishes essentialism from existentialism. Chapter Two provides historical background necessary to understand the role of Scholasticism in Descartes's thought. Chapter Three discusses the role of Christian Platonism in both Descartes and the Scholastics, especially their shared Augustinian presupposition that knowledge of essences is of "how things are in themselves" (56).The next three chapters discuss the metaphysical status of ideas. In Chapter Four, Secada contrasts Descartes's "immanent" theory according to which "the immediate objects of ideas must exist in the mind" (85) with the "realist Scholastic" theory that "takes mental acts to be immediately directed towards things" (83). In Chapter Five, this account is applied to an interpretation of the Second Meditation as a defense of intellectualist essentialism against Scholastics and empiricists. "Contrary to the Scholastics and other empiricists, Descartes attributed to the intellect and not to the senses the power to reach the world of substances existing outside of the inner theatre of the mind" (116). Through comparing Descartes with Suarez and Gassendi, Secada argues that all the proofs of existence in the Meditations, including for the cogito, argue from [End Page 292] knowledge of essence to knowledge of existence. Chapter Six turns to Descartes's proofs for the existence of God. According to Secada, even for a posteriori proofs, knowledge of God's existence depends on knowledge of his essence.The last three chapters examine Descartes's theory of substance. Chapter Seven reconstructs Descartes's distinction between substances and properties. A substance is something that "exists without inhering" and "exists uncaused" (185). Secada discusses the nature of substance, how substances other than God can be "uncaused," and the plausibility of Descartes's sharp distinction between substances and properties. The chapter ends by arguing that Descartes's doctrine about the relationship between substances and properties inadvertently "heralds Spinoza's pantheism" (185). Chapter Eight examines real and essential properties in Cartesian metaphysics in contrast to Suarez and Fonseca, and ends with a partial defense of Descartes's ontological argument. Chapter Nine offers a detailed discussion of two fundamental substances in Descartes's metaphysics: body and mind. Secada argues that Descartes offers no satisfactory explanations of body, mind, or the relationship between the two.As is clear from this brief summary, Cartesian Metaphysics is a rich book. It presents important historical details without endless irrelevant details (see especially the sketch of Descartes's Scholastic background on 27-33). The exegetical arguments make strong cases for new interpretations of Descartes. Secada effectively shows that Descartes is more concerned with metaphysics than with refuting skepticism. Comparisons with Suarez and Fonseca shed new light on Cartesian arguments. Reconstructions of Cartesian arguments even tempt one to take Descartes seriously in contemporary metaphysics. And the criticisms of Descartes are thought-provoking.Unfortunately, the... (shrink)

James Collins probes the meaning and methods of historical interpretation in philosophy by analyzing the creative reciprocity between the modern source thinkers—the great classical philosophers from Descartes and Locke to Mill and Nietzsche—and their midtwentieth century interpreters. Originally published in 1972. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in (...) durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

A translation from Russian into English of Alexandre Kojève's narrative article, taken from his diary of 1920. Foremost, it is a literary piece. Descartes and Buddha appear to the narrator as part of a reverie or dream. They engage in dialogue. Soon, their exchange and the dream itself are disrupted, and the narrative ends. An articulation of historical difference is not the aim of this piece; rather, the dialogue stages through its characters the procession of dialectical reasoning. As (...) a document of intellectual history, it shows clearly the beginnings in the manner of thought of the philosopher who later became so instrumental for the interpretation of Hegel in the 20th century. (shrink)

For this special issue, dedicated to the historical break in what one might call ‘the politics of feeling’ between ancient ‘passions’ (in the ‘soul’) and modern ‘emotions’ (in the ‘mind’), I will suggest that the pivotal difference might be located instead between ancient and modern conceptions of the passions. Through new interpretations of two exemplars of these conceptions, Plato’s Phaedrus and Descartes’ Passions of the Soul, I will suggest that our politics today need to return to what (...) I term Plato’s ‘psychological virtue’ (drawing on virtue’s dual senses as ‘goodness’ and ‘power’), defined as a dynamic tension among mindful desire (nous), carnal desire (epithumia) and societal desire (thumos) achieved through rational discourse (logos). The upshot of this concept of psychological virtue, is that mind, at least via discourse, is also a desiring force, and thus capable of helping create new actions for souls in the political world. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to bring an end to the interpretative dispute on Descartes’s cog­ito: is the cogito known by intuition or by inference? There have been several studies based on both analytical and historical approaches to the dispute, and it seems that we have exhausted all interpretations. Nevertheless, I wish to revisit this dispute, as it ap­pears that the previous studies have overlooked Descartes’s use of words and phrases, which is the most significant (...) for understanding his various discourses on the cogito con­sistently. In this paper, I focus on the terms which Descartes uses to indicate the varied status of the cogito, such as ‘haec cognitio, ego cogito, ergo sum’, ‘hanc propositionem, ego cogito, ergo sum’, ‘hanc conclusionem: cogito, ergo sum’, and so on; Descartes changes carefully the terms in each of the cogito arguments. By focusing on these terms, I try to interpret Descartes’s explanations consistently. (shrink)

Widespread scholarly agreement has it that Descartes' theory of judgment favors a compatibilist interpretation. This essay explains and rebuts the standard arguments made on behalf of compatibilist readings, while explaining and defending a libertarian interpretation. Along with relevant Fourth Meditation doctrines and texts, my analysis encompasses a much discussed 1645 letter discussing his account. Although some scholars view the letter as departing from the account of theMeditations, I argue that the two works present a consistent view – allowing us (...) to take at face value that the letter purports to elaborate Descartes' intended meaning in the associated Fourth Meditation passage. (shrink)

HOME . ABOUT US . CONTACT US HELP . PUBLISH WITH US . LIBRARIANS Search in or Explore Browse Publications A-Z Browse Subjects A-Z Advanced Search University of Cambridge SIGN IN Register | Why Register? | Sign Out | Got a Voucher? prev abstract next Two Approaches to Reading the Historical Descartes A Devout Catholic? Knowledge of The Mental Thought and Language Descartes as A Natural Philosopher Substance Dualism Notes Two Approaches to Reading the Historical (...) class='Hi'>Descartes Author: Desmond M. Clarke DOI: 10.1080/09608780902986680 Publication Frequency: 5 issues per year Published in: British Journal for the History of Philosophy, Volume 17, Issue 3 June 2009 , pages 601 - 616 John Cottingham: Cartesian Reflections: Essays on Descartes's Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008) 40.00 (hb.). ISBN 978-0-19-922697-9 John Cottingham, in a new collection of essays, asks the question: 'what exactly did Descartes himself chiefly take himself to be doing?' (254). 1 While the question is relatively clear, and while it acknowledges implicitly that Descartes was probably doing a range of different things, the answer that is apparently proposed here emerges only on reading the whole collection. Cottingham distinguishes in Chapter 1 - which is a new, synoptic overview of what is discussed in the other chapters, all of which were previously published - between two approaches to reading Descartes. One is to see him as 'a dummy on which to drape various suspect doctrines (such as “Cartesian dualism”)' (3), which contemporary analytic philosophers have shown to be radically mistaken. Another approach is adopted by historians of ideas 'who make it their life's work to pay meticulous scholarly attention to the philosophical works of past ages' (3). Cottingham does not explicitly criticize either of these approaches, but he hints at situating his own as some kind of Aristotelian middle course between the two. Since the two reference points are dangerously close to straw men or what Cottingham calls 'extreme positions', the proposed middle way may simply combine elements of two approaches, each of which is entirely legitimate. I return to this question at the conclusion. In fact, many of these essays were intended to show (rightly!) that Descartes never held the philosophical positions that are often attributed to him. The interpretation of Karol Wojtyla, later Pope John Paul II, provides a good example of how mistaken one can be: The Cogito ergo sum radically changed the way of doing philosophy … After Descartes, philosophy became a science of pure thought: all that is being- the created world, and even the Creator, is situated within the ambit of the Cogito, as contents of human consciousness. Philosophy is concerned with beings as contained in consciousness, and not as existing independently of it. (257) The only way to address such a caricature is to refer back to what Descartes actually wrote. Cottingham does precisely that, often quoting the original Latin or French texts. However, having shown successfully, by a close reading of the texts, that Descartes did not hold many of the views that are attributed to him, it still remains to say what Descartes did hold or teach about various philosophical problems that retain their perennial interest for us. This is how the question arises, intermittently, about what Descartes thought he was 'chiefly' doing, or what was his primary objective, in the course of an intellectual career that spanned three decades. However, the apparently legitimate desire to bring Descartes' intellectual endeavours into sharp focus may be frustrated by the evidence. His life and work manifestly lack the coherence or unity of purpose that one finds, for example, among many of his French or Dutch contemporaries. It is comparatively easy to 'read' the life of Gisbertus Voetius as that of an unwavering Calvinist theologian, to see Antoine Arnauld as a staunch and consistent theological defender of Port Royal, and even to interpret the obviously fragmentary contents of Pascal's unpublished notebooks (subsequently, the Penses) as an extended search for authentic religious faith, in opposition to what he perceived as the corruption of ecclesial structures. In contrast, Descartes' life reveals features that are difficult to integrate into a coherent pattern. He lived and published during a critical juncture in the Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth century. Although baptized into the Catholic Church soon after his birth in the Loire district of France, he chose to live most of his life in the aggressively Calvinist United Provinces, in which other religious practices were officially (though often ineffectively) banned. Descartes may have adopted the motto from Ovid, at least early in his career: 'bene vixit qui bene latuit' (he lives well who conceals himself well), and he seems genuinely to have wished to avoid theological controversies. However, he engaged in very public controversies with so many of his contemporaries - including Hobbes, Gassendi, the French Jesuits (collectively) and Father Dinet (in particular), Voetius and the University of Utrecht, Regius, Fermat, Roberval, Revius and other theologians at Leiden - that one might conclude that his claimed preference for a quiet life was a disingenuous mask. 2 Descartes published four books during his lifetime, and wrote at least one other that he had intended to publish. The latter was his first major composition, Le Monde, which he suppressed when he heard about Galileo's condemnation by Rome in 1633. This was followed, in 1637, by Descartes' first book (also written in French), which he tried to publish anonymously by withholding his name from the title page: the Discours de la methode pour bien conduire sa raison, & chercher la verit dans les sciences. Plus la dioptrique, les meteors, et la geometrie, qui sont des essais de cete methode. Four years later Descartes published the first edition (in Latin) of Meditationes de prima philosophia, in quibus Dei existentia et animae immortalitas demonstrator, which also included six sets of objections and replies. The Principia philosophiae appeared (in Latin) in Amsterdam in 1644, and was followed five years later by Les Passions de l'Ame (in French). 3 In parallel with these publications, Descartes carried on a very extensive correspondence over a thirty-year period (in both Latin and French), and preserved copies or drafts of his letters with a view to future publication. Given the range and variety of his interests, and the sheer volume of writings, published or otherwise, that have survived from his pen, one may be tempted to engage in a comparative evaluation, as Cottingham does, by selecting one of Descartes' books as his primary contribution to philosophy. Cottingham claims that the Meditations was Descartes''masterpiece' (44), 'the definitive statement of Descartes's philosophy' (45) and the 'definitive statement of his metaphysics' (68). He also describes the Meditations more narrowly as 'his metaphysical masterpiece' (259, 303) and, more broadly, as 'his philosophical masterpiece' (289), and he lists it with the Discours as one of Descartes' two 'masterworks' (280). The Principia offers some competition in this comparative judgement when it is described as 'the canonical presentation of his metaphysical views' (114), while 'the construction of a moral system … was the crowning aim of his philosophy' (231). Having pitched repeatedly for the Meditations as Descartes' primary text, Cottingham claims that its author was 'a devout Catholic' (215), that he was 'a devoutly religious philosopher' (256), and that he could not free himself 'from the influence of the long years of theological study he had dutifully completed at La Flche' (62). Accordingly, the Meditations should be read as 'in essence a work of theodicy' (220); 'what has pride of place in the construction of his philosophical system is … an appeal to God … the nature and existence of the Deity is something that lies at the very heart of his entire philosophical system' (255). Without quite saying so, there are hints here that Descartes was a devout Christian whose primary intellectual contribution was to write a work of metaphysics, in which God is central and in the course of which the author alternates between proving God's existence and contemplating God - the latter a seventeenth-century version of Bonaventure's Journey of the Soul to God. 'Descartes's attraction to a contemplative mode of philosophizing' (305) is reflected, in the Meditations, in 'the language of the soul's coming to rest in adoring contemplation of the light' (306). Cottingham also accepts the overwhelming evidence from Descartes' correspondence that he 'devoted most of his career not to metaphysics but to science' (108), although he quibbles elsewhere with those who adopt the shorthand term 'science' to describe part of what was called 'natural philosophy' in the seventeenth century (282). He also refers to the '(notoriously lame) argument for the essential incorporeality of the thinking self' in one of Descartes' masterworks (60), and he describes the 'strange, seemingly isolated world of his metaphysical meditations' (139), with its 'creaking ontology' (147), when read in isolation from the rest of his work as a natural philosopher. How should we read him, then, in the twenty-first century? A Devout Catholic? That Descartes was a devout Catholic is possible, unlikely and undecidable. He seems not to have studied theology at all while at school at La Flche, although he completed the pre-theology college cycle in the company of Jesuit students who then continued their studies in theology. Descartes consistently attempted to avoid public entanglement with religious and theological controversies, and said so frequently. 4 Given the alignments that prevailed at the time, both in France. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 40.1 (2002) 122-123 [Access article in PDF] Book Review Spirits and Clocks: Machine & Organism in Descartes Dennis Des Chene. Spirits and Clocks: Machine & Organism in Descartes. Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, 2001. Pp. xiii + 181. Cloth, $39.95. Confronted with the thousandth "entirely new" interpretation of the Cartesian mind-body union, one sometimes wonders whether anything new can (...) in fact be said about the great Descartes. Once again, after his invaluable and prize-winning Physiologia (Cornell University Press, 1996), Des Chene proves that a serious historian, with a keen awareness of historical context, actually can. Unlike the usual accounts of Descartes's animal-machine, Des Chene does not concentrate on the all too familiar set of questions whether or not machines can think, sense, etc. Instead, Des Chene interprets the machine-metaphor the way Descartes meant it to be, viz. as a model for explaining animal and human physiology instead of (cognitive) psychology. Des Chene's central claim is that the Traité de l'Homme and Descartes's later (unpublished) physiological tracts are an attempt to replace scholastic commentaries on Aristotle's De Anima, itself discussed in this book's companion volume Life's Forms (Cornell University Press, 2000). Spirits and Clocks investigates how Descartes's general mechanistic program (outlined in Physiologia) is applied to the field of animal and human life. This project in itself had a far more lasting influence than Descartes's specific and often bizarre physiological explanations. Therefore, Des Chene rightly concentrates on the philosophical aspects of Descartes's general project of "mechanizing" physiology. His short but illuminating book studies a wide range of ontological, epistemological, and even aesthetic aspects of the machine metaphor and, although this is not the express goal [End Page 122] of the book, it also sheds new light on the epistemology and metaphysics of the Meditations. In this sense Spirits and Clocks is not only a significant contribution to the history of biology but first and foremost a must for historians of philosophy.Des Chene explains that the use of a machine model in physiology was neither new nor entirely unacceptable to the Aristotelians. What is new is Descartes's use of it. His mechanistic understanding of the body as a machine is incompatible with accepting the soul as the source of life and the principle of all our physiological and psychological capacities, while Aristotelians had no problem in accepting both the soul and certain machine models of the body. (Aristotle himself uses the lever to explain animal motion.) Des Chene sketches Descartes's attempt to explain all physiological processes by means of the physical properties of material parts that obey the general laws of motion, excluding all talk of ends. In this context, the use of illustrations is of considerable importance: though they cannot per se convey a denial of a "soul-model" of physiology, they strongly suggest that the (mechanistically understood) machine is all there is to say about the functions of human and animal bodies. Des Chene offers an interesting, albeit sometimes somewhat speculative and ahistoric, discussion of the aesthetic aspects of the machine model.As Des Chene showed in his Physiologia, the rejection of teleology is one of the main goals of Descartes's physics. However, although Descartes may be successful in rejecting the view that stones fall down from some kind of desire to reach their final destiny, he is less successful in denying that the eye is meant for seeing (and hence for our self-preservation). Des Chene gives a truly fascinating account of the limits of Descartes's denial of teleology in physiology. This includes questions about the physical unity of the human body: how can I explain why I have this body and how can I even identify this body as a unit without invoking ends? Similarly, Descartes takes the healthy, "normally" functioning body as the norm of his investigations. But, again, can he do so without acknowledging some form of teleology? Descartes's answer in most of these cases is that the final goals... (shrink)

This edited volume systematically addresses the connection between Wilfrid Sellars and the history of modern philosophy, exploring both the content and method of this relationship. It intends both to analyze Sellars’s position in relation to singular thinkers of the modern tradition, and to inquire into Sellars’s understanding of philosophy as a field in reflective and constructive conversation with its past. The chapters in Part I cover Sellars’s interpretation and use of Descartes, Leibniz, Hume, Kant and Hegel. Part II features (...) essays on his relationship with Peirce, Frege, Carnap, Wittgenstein, American pragmatism, behaviorism and American realism, particularly his father, Roy Wood. Sellars and the History of Modern Philosophy features original contributions by many of the most renowned Sellars scholars throughout the world. It offers an exhaustive survey of Sellars’s views on the historical antecedents and metaphilosophical aspects of his thought. (shrink)

A review of the Historical Dictionary as a research resource.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 43.1 (2005) 55-81 [Access article in PDF] Self-Knowledge in Descartes and Malebranche Lawrence Nolan John Whipple 1. Introduction Descartes's notorious claim that mind is better known than body has been the target of repeated criticisms, but none appears more challenging than that of his intellectual heir Nicolas Malebranche.1 Whereas other critics—especially twentieth-century philosophers eager to use Descartes as their whipping (...) boy—have often been uncharitable, Malebranche accepts many of the fundamental Cartesian doctrines, including mind-body dualism. But he argues that Descartes's position on knowledge of the mind is internally inconsistent. Malebranche agrees with Descartes that the existence of the mind is better known than that of body, but he vehemently denies that the nature of the mind is better known. This denial is based on his view that we lack a clear idea of the mind.2 [End Page 55]Malebranche's polemic has attracted much attention in recent scholarship.3 The growing consensus among commentators is that Malebranche develops a devastating internal critique of Descartes's theory of the mind. For example, Nicholas Jolley writes: "In his case for his negative thesis [concerning knowledge of the mind] Malebranche mounted a powerful, even annihilating, critique of Descartes. This critique embodies the remarkable insight that there is a serious muddle at the heart of Descartes's whole theory of knowledge."4 In a book-length defense of Malebranche's critique, Tad Schmaltz also emphasizes its internal character: "the interpretation here of Malebranche's theory presents it as fundamentally Cartesian, and thereby serves to reinforce his own view that he has provided an authoritative interpretation of the account of mind in the writings of Descartes and other Cartesians."5 Schmaltz also asserts: "Malebranche took his negative thesis concerning our knowledge of the soul to involve not so much a rejection of Cartesianism as an internal correction of it."6We think such remarks misstate the case. Indeed, we argue in this paper that Malebranche's polemic fails as an internal critique of Descartes's theory of the mind. Although we do not here aspire to defend Descartes's strong thesis—that mind is better known than body—we do think he can consistently maintain that we have a clear and distinct idea of the mind, and thus that our knowledge of the mind's nature is at least on a par with our knowledge of corporeal nature.7 While Malebranche's rhetoric would encourage us to think that the debate between him and his predecessor is being fought on common or neutral ground, the fact is that Malebranche often appeals to assumptions and aspects of his own theory of "Vision in God" that Descartes would reject. Once more, he interprets Descartes's theory of knowledge in ways that are misguided and sometimes even uncharitable. If Malebranche's critique succeeds at all, it succeeds only against a straw man—Malebranche's Descartes and not the historical figure.Ours is not the first effort to defend Descartes against this particular attack. When Malebranche first published his critique in Book Three of his first great work, The Search After Truth (1674),8 Descartes had been dead for over two decades, [End Page 56] but he was ably defended by the famous Cartesian Antoine Arnauld in On True and False Ideas (1683). In the ensuing debate Arnauld was clearly the superior dialectician, but while winning several tactical points, he appears not to fully appreciate the crux of Malebranche's argument, or at least that is the view of Jolley and Schmaltz.9 We have a somewhat higher opinion of Arnauld's side of the debate. Granted, some of his defenses are facile and can be easily dismissed; others however are quite compelling when properly developed. In at least one instance, we attempt to provide that development. At the same time we think it is a mistake to treat Arnauld as Descartes's surrogate or as if he had issued the final salvo from the camp of the orthodox Cartesians. Arnauld was a... (shrink)